How big would a magnet need to be to destroy a harddrive?

Question

How big would a magnet need to be to destroy a harddrive?
And where could I buy one?

Answer 1

To destroy data with a magnetic field may or may not work depending on the HDD casing and circuitry. You'd be better off opening the case and soaking it in salt water for a few hours. Instead I suggest a data destroying program such as the ones in the links. Then the drive could be reused as just a storage system or archive. Good luck with your choice.

Answer 2

To completely destroy a Harddrive it would have to be a pretty big magnet. Why do you want to do this. Also you can buy one at a hardware store. A sledge hammer will do the same thing ;)

Answer 3

As long as the magnet will stick too metal it will destroy harddrive or do some damage. So other words any magnet.

Answer 4

I think it doesn't matter how big the magnet is but it has to be near the hard drive to destroy the information on the hard drive. You could probably buy it on ebay.com or amazon.com.

Answer 5

that certainly relies upon on what style of archives you had on the rigidity. If this computing gadget replace into used for financial documents or different secret training, then bodily destroying the rigidity is the main suitable way. yet an basic 3 bypass delete utilising energetic@Killdisk would be sufficient to steer away from maximum "hackers" from recuperating something.

Answer 6

you need a nice big neodinium magnet to cause any damage.
the hard disk is covered with anti magetic material so as to avoid these sort of damages, so to surpass that use some immagination

Answer 7

It's not so much how big, as it is how powerful. They did this on Mythbusters. It took an exceedingly powerful electromagnet before any damage was apparent.

Answer 8

best way to destroy ya hard drive is to use a BIG hammer lol